


Lealtad

by Solrika



Series: Reaper and Wraiths [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blackwatch, Reaper and Wraiths AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 03:54:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8474377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solrika/pseuds/Solrika
Summary: Blackwatch burns with its commander, and breathes again with his rise.





	

We know one thing: there are many ways to start a story. 

i.

Gabriel breathes in, and chokes on ash and anger. What’s left of one of his hands is still tangled around a shot gun. He can smell blood and char and something uncomfortably close to cooking meat. Gabriel breathes around his own ribs.

There is some deep, innate knowledge that tells him Jack is long gone, limping away from the scene of the crime. He smells it, tastes it on his tongue, sees it in the little flags of blood and scraps of blue wavering away into the distance. Gabriel gasps, tries to drag himself forwards, fails in the way one does when your torso is in pieces. He breathes around the wreckage and decides that there are worse places to fall asleep. 

There is golden light seeping in around the edges of his vision, creeping around the rubble and the dust. He hears screaming as those slipping away are wrenched back. _Mercy_ , Gabriel thinks, and if he still had lips it wouldn’t a grin twisting them.

He’s almost gone when she finds him, drags him out of the remains by his collar. “I can fix this,” he hears, “I can fix this,” and if he had the strength he’d remember Genji and clock her a solid one across the jaw.

ii.

It makes international news when the Swedish Watchpoint explodes, and it’s big enough that even a little television station in podunk nowhere plays the footage over and over. Jesse’s sitting in a bar with an old-fashioned tv set, antennas and everything, but he learns about the implosion a different way: Genji texts him.

It’s an old signal, a Morse code of dashes and dots and a set of coordinates afterwards. 

He’s out the door and in a hot-wired car in thirty seconds. Five minutes and he’s grabbing his bag out of the hotel. Ten and he’s on the road again, leaving the little town and its attempt at a police chase in his dust. Blackwatch training serves him well enough that by the time he shows up at the airport, no one can connect wanted outlaw Jesse McCree with the soft-spoken young man who books the next ticket to Zurich. 

He sits in the airport and texts Genji again and again-- _are you safe, what’s happening, where’s Gabe_ \--

Boarding goes by in a blur. Jesse watches the ground disappear.

\--and Genji replies with _I don’t know, I don’t know, Jesse, I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know_ \--

Jesse knows they’re fucked when it dissolves into _S.O.S., S.O.S_., over and over and over again as Genji’s systems send out their automatic distress signal. He hunches over in his too-small seat and watches his partner have a panic attack in dots and dashes and wonders if maybe he’s flying straight into hell.

iii.

The search parties have been combing through the wreckage for a week, and the bodies of Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes still haven’t been recovered. Genji digs until his fingers are covered with dust and scratches, and only finds more bodies. Some are twice-died, thrice-died, and he barely manages to keep from snatching Angela from the sky where she hovers in a parody of a benevolent angel. He’s not sure whether it’s him or the dragon who wants to rip the wings off her back.

The second Tuesday, Jesse drags him away from the rubble. “We need to get th’ fuck away from this,” Jesse says, “just for a bit,” and Genji sees the desperation in his eyes, and Genji goes. They walk aimlessly, clutching at each other like scared children. They circle the base--the hulking skeleton of steel and glass--they circle outwards, they climb into the mountains because the dragon seeks heights and Jesse’s always been fine with following along. They stand on a ridge and breathe, and breathe, and Genji feels like if he lets himself feel anything more than the wind and Jesse’s hand is his, he’ll fall apart all over again.

They stand on a ridge and breathe, and Jesse says, “I smell smoke.” 

And Genji tilts his head and does a scan and says, “I’m picking up activity.”

It’s odd. 

They’re still Blackwatch, under it all. 

They head towards it.

ii.

Jesse’s seen some mountain shacks in his life. This is not a mountain shack. It’s a Watchpoint in miniature, glass and chrome and a slick sliding door that Genji kicks down without any finesse. 

They see what’s inside, and Genji says, voice flat, “I will kill her.”

Jesse shoots the monitors, unhooks what he can, rips out everything else, hauls the body upwards. “Kill her later. Help me now.”

Genji swallows, green sparking around his eyes, fingers curling like claws. But Jesse looks at him, and says, “ _Darlin_ ’,” and if there’s one thing that the dragon and Genji agree on, it’s that vengeance comes a step behind family. When the cyborg moves forwards and helps shoulder their burden, Jesse feels like he might burst with desperate, painful love. 

Jesse leads them out into the mountains, because he knows a thing or two about disappearing into nature. 

There is smoke curling over their arms. They don’t loosen their grip.

iv.

Marisol has been stuck in a windowless room for a week, living off rations and recycled air and bottled water. Her remaining sombras are tense and anxious and the room is filled with the frenetic light of cybernetic eyes cycling through their ‘panic’ setting. She massages her forehead, says, “Artemis?”

“Yes?”

“Now?”

“Two more hours,” Artemis replies, voice as apologetic as an AI can be. “Just to be sure, you understand.”

“Yes,” Marisol says. She lets their youngest squirm under her arm, pets her head as Eun-bi snuffles like the child she never got to be. “I understand.” 

They finally emerge, blinking into the light, and Marisol refuses to flinch back from the bodies littering the halls. She takes who she can to patrol, shoving guns into hands that are better suited to keyboards and mice. They find corpses of Talon and Blackwatch both, some still locked in combat. 

They find, eventually, survivors--Blackwatch, all of them, and if Marisol doesn’t fall weeping upon them she does have to wipe her eyes. There are less than she hoped, but more than expected. Of their command staff, it appears she’s the only one who survived the attack or didn’t turn traitor, and Marisol refuses to think on that.

She gathers the agents all in the rec room, has them get more rations and feed each other. The younger ones huddle on the floor together, and the older field agents pace the perimeter, guns and knives held firmly in hand. It says something about them all, Marisol thinks wryly, that the little ones relax to see the weapons out. 

“Send casualty reports to my pad,” she tells Artemis, and refuses to show the others. 

Some leave, in the next week, and she doesn’t blame them. They’re the rare few that have families still, or places to go, and a mostly-empty base still strewn with corpses makes for a poor home. 

Marisol makes an effort in the next week to clean things up. Those that have the stomach for it--field agents, mostly, and their lone interrogator--drag the bodies to the edge of La Mesa and leave them for the vultures. They sweep the floors, consolidate living quarters. Artemis plays music for them, and movies at night. There are attempts at cooking with what’s left of their supplies, and the pilots head out to get more, returning with helicoptors laden with food and cookbooks. 

It is the strangest, most domestic limbo Marisol has ever found herself in. 

i.

Gabriel breathes in and tastes rot. Standing on the edge of La Mesa in a pile of corpses, he can’t help but wonder what’s waiting for him. 

He’s left his damn fool boys back in Arizona, curled together in sleeping bags under the night sky. _We’re going with you_ , they’d said, _we’re not letting out out of our sight, you would die for us and we’ll return the favo_ r, and nothing he could say would sway them.   _It’s our fight too_ , they said, and in the end Gabriel had bent, conceded, knew that there was no way getting the kill away from a pair of Blackwatch agents once they’d caught the scent. 

This, though--this he demanded to do on his own, to see if there was anything left of the home they’d carved out of the rock. 

He stands in the middle of rotting flesh, smoke wafting off his back, and can’t help but wonder if he should just turn back. Responsibility pushes him forwards, and he wafts--walks--drifts--towards the big double doors, rests a hand against them.

“Artemis,” he finally says, and the doors warm under his hand. 

“Commander,” she replies.

“Did you hold down the fort?”

She’s quiet, for a long, long time. Finally says, “I did what I could.” Pauses again. Says, “We lost many. The Chilean base was massacred despite my best efforts. At a rough estimate, we have lost three quarters of our agents.” Says, “I’m sorry, Commander.” Murmurs, “I miss them,” almost wondering, and he feels regret that they made her to feel sorrow.

"I miss them too,” he says.

“I know,” she replies, and lets him in. 

His agents meet him gun-first, and he can’t help the swell of pride. Marisol is in the middle of the crowd, holding a meat cleaver, and when she sees him her eyes go squinty and suspicious. “Reyes,” she says, voice flat, “you died.”

“Long story,” he says, absent, doing his best to count heads. Most of her sombras are gone--hackers make for poor fighters, and in some cases, even poorer runners--and the support staff too. There are more of the doctors and nurses than he would have suspected. The field agents seemed to have faired best out of all the Blackwatch units. 

“You better have a good explanation for why you’re wafting nanites everywhere,” Marisol snaps, and he looks back at her, shakes his head helplessly. 

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Isn’t that just typical,” she snorts, and drops her gun to give him a hug, smoke and all. 

It breaks a dam, and next thing Gabriel knows he can’t breathe because his agents are pressing all around them, hugging and clutching and grabbing. He does his best to reach out too, chest too tight, heart too full of relief for who survived and grief for who didn’t. 

Later, Marisol asks, “What next?”

Gabriel shakes his head, feels an echo of the conversation he had with Genji and Jesse when he says, “Blackwatch isn’t active anymore. You don’t owe me anything.”

“What next?” Marisol repeats, looking at him like he’s stupid.

Gabriel huffs out a humorless laugh, tells her, “I’m going to try infiltrating Talon. Take them down from the inside.”

“You’ll need hackers for that,” Marisol says.

“Field agents,” Lauren puts in.

Able adds, “Pilots.” 

Gabriel shakes his head, feels like he’s fighting a tide but tries anyway. “I don’t want to drag you down into this with me. You deserve better.”

iv.

Marisol laughs, slings her arms around her commander’s shoulders. “Try to stop us, jefe.” 

**Author's Note:**

> For sketches and more hcs for this AU, check out the tag "reaper and wraiths au" on my Tumblr. (link in profile)


End file.
